Training

I’ve written about how to find a good trainer. But that’s only one half of the equation. To get the most out of your coaching or personal training experience, you have to be a good client. It was 6:55 am on a weekday morning, many years ago. Rain sloshed down. I’d managed to find the […]

Many swimmers don’t combine weight training with swimming. That’s a mistake. If you’re a swimmer, I highly recommend that you support your swimming with some strength and conditioning work. Here’s how.

Pulling is a primal movement pattern, and great for bodyweight-only exercises. But what if you don’t have a pullup bar, or aren’t strong enough (yet) to make pullups the cornerstone of your bodyweight routine? Enter the crawl. Drop and get under that barbed wire field, soldier!

Most fighters end up with certain muscles totally overdeveloped. Because of the way grappling works, the psoas muscles get very, very tight. However, many non-grapplers also have a lot of psoas problems, simply from sitting all day. The psoas shortens and becomes tight. An overdeveloped, shortened psoas means less mobility, reduced speed, and greater risk of injury.

For those new to strength training, details can be a little overwhelming. After all, you might just want some simple advice on getting started. If so, this article is for you. This program starts you off with a few basic movements that are guaranteed to increase your overall strength and fitness if you’re a beginner.

Remember that one of the big lies in the gym was that women should stick to machines and stay away from free weights? Related to that is the lie that one should “start out” on machines and then “graduate” to free weights. Well, here’s why it ain’t so, as well as why free weights are often better for women.

Staying weak because of how it might make you look is the same as staying illiterate for fear of appearing nerdy. Women have somehow been sold a false bill of goods when it comes to working out. Here’s why flapping your arms around with purple dumbbells is not typically helpful.

In the first part of this article, we discovered why lifting weights for strength is not going to turn you into a she-beast. In the second part, Geoff Girvitz gives you some concrete examples of how to put the theory of getting stronger into practice.